


triage

by andnowforyaya



Series: the one where daejae are ex-spies and i wanted to write domestic daejae [1]
Category: B.A.P, K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Crimes & Criminals, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Organized Crime, Physical Therapy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secret Relationship, Surgery, Therapy, Whump, after effects of torture, dae whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-21 05:18:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1539122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He hasn’t slept properly since then - hasn’t really slept properly for weeks, since Daehyun fell off the map, but if Daehyun doesn’t pull through - if Daehyun doesn’t wake up -</p><p>He thinks about their tiny, shared apartment in DC, so rarely used, and even more rarely used together. He won’t be able to set foot into it again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	triage

They have to cut him down from the meat hook like so much livestock, catching him before he crumples, a sound like Youngjae has never heard before breaking out from between Daehyun’s mashed, bloody lips - a scream that can’t be fully formed because the muscles aren’t there to form them, anymore, because his vocal chords have burst, and will take weeks to heal.

The leader of this local crime ring is going down for a long time, but he wasn’t their target, and Youngjae takes in the ruin of Daehyun’s body and thinks it won’t be enough. It won’t be nearly enough.

Yongguk hefts Daehyun’s limp form into a sick imitation of a bridal carry and walks them out, gentle but quick. Time is not on their side.

“Close it off,” Yongguk orders out of the corner of his mouth, but Youngjae’s fingers are shaking, his blood running rampant inside his veins. There’s meat, huge cuts of ribs and spines, still hanging on some of the hooks in the walk-in refrigerator, and he wonders - he wonders how long they’d kept Daehyun in the shipment containers before moving him here, just before the docks the target ring controlled were compromised. He wonders if they’d thought it would be easier just to kill him, dump his body, than to wait for him to squeal.

Youngjae had let Daehyun down. He hadn’t acted fast enough, hadn’t gathered enough information in the right amount of time, hadn’t put his agents in the right places, and now Daehyun is a shattered, broken thing, because of him.

“Youngjae,” Yongguk snaps. “ _Now_.”

“Right,” Youngjae says, nodding, swallowing back bile.

.

Youngjae hates hospitals, has spent too much time in hospitals. He hates hospitals overseas, even more, everything familiar but just slightly different enough to be unsettling, but they can’t move Daehyun back home yet. Everything is too fragile.

The clerk behind the desk on this floor waves him on, smiling at him, as he ducks around the corner, and he is mindful of his shoes and worried he’s trailing dirt onto the pristine white floors.

Everything is sterile, here, except for Youngjae, who feels like he’s got more and more blood stained under his fingernails for every day that Daehyun does not wake up. Oh, he’s stirred a little, on the edge of full consciousness for less than thirty seconds at a time, but it’s been a week, now.

Seven whole days, and they’re still finding things they need to stitch up about him.

Youngjae had watched the first round of surgeries with Yongguk firm and authoritative and comforting by his side, but he had to leave the observation room when they’d nearly lost Daehyun, the monotone beep of the monitor a hideous echo behind the glass.

He hasn’t slept properly since then - hasn’t really slept properly for _weeks_ , since Daehyun fell off the map, but if Daehyun doesn’t pull through - if Daehyun doesn’t wake up -

He thinks about their tiny, shared apartment in DC, so rarely used, and even more rarely used together. He won’t be able to set foot into it again. He won’t be able to open the door and walk across the refurbished hardwood floors without thinking about how Daehyun used to glide over them in socked feet, pulling Youngjae with him to the kitchen counter, or to the window out to their fire escape, or to their couch. Their moments together had been so fleeting, and yet, they are the memories Youngjae holds closest to his heart. Treasured.

Secret.

If Daehyun doesn’t wake up someone will have to keep him from burning the entire apartment building to the ground.

Daehyun’s room is dark, the curtains drawn, and he has the added comfort of privacy because the other bed is unoccupied, though Youngjae thinks the Agency pulled some strings to keep it that way. He closes the door behind him and shuffles forward, taking his seat next to the hospital bed.

Daehyun is breathing on his own, which is a good sign. The bruises and swelling on his face - most heavy around his left eye - are healing nicely, and won’t leave any lasting marks. He’ll have a small, silver scar down his right cheek from the clean slice of a knife, but other than that, it seems his face was spared.

His body is another story, one that the doctors tell in charts and doses, but all Youngjae can see is pain. Horrible, lasting pain - the kind that means Daehyun will never be able to put his full weight on his right knee again, that he will have to relearn how to write, how to hold a pen, that there are chunks of him missing, huge scars that will take over those pieces. A curve of raised flesh over his hip; marbled, shiny skin gracing his shoulder like armor; a series of dashes and dots forming a constellation over his back, his ribs.

They’d tried to carve secrets out of Daehyun. And now, it is Youngjae’s job to recount the butchering, to see if they’d gotten away with any.

He doesn’t want to. He wants to bring Daehyun home with him when he is stable enough to move, and he wants to keep him in their dusty apartment under the covers of their bed, safe from the world. He’d rather cut off his left arm than drag Daehyun through his weeks of radio silence again.

This, he supposes rationally, is why the Agency discourages relationships between handlers and operatives. Not that they’ve told anyone about their relationship, but people must suspect.

On the bed, Daehyun’s finger twitches, and Youngjae’s entire body responds, jumping in his seat and pulling himself forward, closer. He leans over and puts his elbows onto his knees, and he takes Daehyun’s hand in his, his breath caught in his throat as his fingers brush over cool skin, careful not to jostle the IV taped there.

“Daehyun,” he whispers, his voice loud in the still, dark room. “Daehyun, please wake up. It’s me. It’s Youngjae.”

Daehyun’s finger twitches again, in his hand, and Youngjae tries not to give in to the burning feeling at the backs of his eyes, tries to keep hope at bay, but finds that he can’t. He’s been holding it back for days, an ocean behind his eyes, and now it spills over, unbidden.

“Daehyun,” he whispers again. “ _Please_.”

His tears wet the sheets, fall between his fingers around Daehyun’s hand. He should be ashamed, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, holding onto Daehyun’s hand, crying, feeling like he’s giving in, but eventually the sky outside of the curtains darken, and he has to flick on the small lamp on the table next to the bed, so he lets go.

Daehyun groans.

Youngjae freezes, finger pressed against the switch on the lamp, eyes glued to Daehyun’s face. There is movement behind Daehyun’s eyelids, and Youngjae dares not even to breathe, believing suddenly that every molecule in this room must stay in its place in order for Daehyun to return to him.

Daehyun groans again, and then his eyelids flutter open.

He blinks, orienting himself, and Youngjae waits, heart beating fast. Waits for recognition and relief and for Daehyun to say something, to say anything, and he reaches for Daehyun’s hand again and grips it, trying not to hold too tightly.

Daehyun gasps, eyes finally settling on Youngjae. His lips curl up slightly, in a tiny smile, and he tries to squeeze around Youngjae’s hand, but can only manage a slight, welcome pressure. His eyes drift closed again. His voice, when he speaks, is paper sliding against paper.  

“--thought I’d never see you again,” he murmurs.

.

Healing is a long, arduous process, back stateside.

He files for a leave of absence, and Daehyun resents him for it, at first. Resents him for being there to see him at his worst, frustrated because his legs won’t move properly, because he can barely hold a spoon in his hand without his whole arm shaking from the effort, because he is weak from all the medication, can’t keep anything down, anyway; can’t sleep without the added help of heavy sedatives.

Resents Youngjae, too, for putting his life on hold for him, for putting him first.

But he resents himself the most, for needing so much, for wanting Youngjae to stay by him. Youngjae can read this in the push-pull of their conversations, how Daehyun retreats into himself as much as he reaches out to Youngjae, and then he snaps back like a rubberband, exhausted and afraid.

It is night, and Youngjae will not leave his side as Daehyun succumbs to the sedatives pulsing through his veins. Today he walked down the hall, like a newborn colt, face bright even as he’d collided into Youngjae’s open arms, panting from exertion. It had been momentous.

Now, though. Now, Daehyun turns onto his side and regards Youngjae in the dim light as Youngjae scrolls through his unread emails for the day, and he says, “How are you still here?”, awed and breathless, and Youngjae feels numb all over.

 _I am responsible for you_ , Youngjae wants to say. _You were mine to protect._

“I want to be here,” Youngjae says, carefully.

“You could be doing so many other things with your life,” Daehyun says bitterly, mouth turned down into a frown.

“I don’t want to do other things with my life,” Youngjae tells him. “I want to spend it with you.”

Daehyun doesn’t respond, but he reaches for Youngjae’s hand, and Youngjae gives it to him, always.

.

They are at the bottom of the stairs in the entrance of their building and Daehyun’s face drains of color. Youngjae looks at the steps - narrow and sloped, clean and well-maintained. He’d liked them, when they picked the apartment. They seemed bright and welcoming.

Now he can only see sharp angles and and a deadly fall, a mountain, dangerous terrain.

“Here,” he says, putting down his duffel and stooping over, hands on his knees.

“What the fuck, Youngjae,” Daehyun says. He’s proud, still, and there is color rising to his cheeks, as he breathes steadily through his nose, lips pressed into a thin line.

“You can fall down the stairs when it’s not raining out, idiot,” Youngjae huffs. “Now, get on.”

It takes a moment, but Youngjae is patient. Daehyun is calculating the energy and time it will cost him to climb three flights against embarrassment. He’s complained once already about how stiff his knee is, because of the weather. “Fine,” he says.

His weight settles over Youngjae’s back and his cane knocks against the wall. Youngjae bounces him up further, settling him, and prepares for the climb.

.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a notplot thing and also unbetaed and also just, like, totally spawned because i wanted dae!whump for some reason and - i don't know - thanks for reading if you did.
> 
>  
> 
> [writing](http://andnowforyaya.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya)


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